One of the many aspects of China’s trade integration that have puzzled the economists is the rapid upgrading of China’s exports: since the mid-nineties, the range of China’s export products has impressively expanded. In particular, Chinese producers have been able to export capital- and skill-intensive products, high-technology products, and products that are usually considered as belonging to the area of specialization of more developed countries.

This dataset allows to quantify the export sophistication of Chinese regions by providing yearly EXPY and PRODY indices of sophistication.

Methodology: a Short Description

EXPY indexes are constructed yearly from the export baskets of Chinese localities (using the BACI world trade dataset) and foreign countries (using the Chinese customs data). The Chinese customs data report region-level exports and imports by 6-digit product over the 1997-2007 period.

Measures of product-level sophistication PRODY for 1997 were developed using the BACI world trade dataset.